'Harold Washington made us feel proud'

But 25 years after the death of the city's first African-American mayor, are black Chicagoans better off?

November 17, 2012|By Dawn Turner Trice, Chicago Tribune reporter

Robert Starks, who helped run Harold Washington’s 1983 mayoral campaign and was part of his economic development team, says Chicago's black community has seen some setbacks since Washington's time. (Heather Charles, Chicago Tribune)

In the spring of 1987, when Chicago Mayor Harold Washington took his second oath of office, many African-American residents hoped the re-election of the city's first black mayor would end four years of racial and partisan bickering in the City Council.

Time had already begun dismantling a patronage machine that for decades had dispensed jobs and services unevenly in the city's black and white wards.

The expectation now was that the man who called himself a reformer could begin in earnest fixing problems in the black community that no other mayor had fully undertaken or understood. For his second term, Washington vowed to fight poverty by focusing on jobs and economic development and improve public housing and the school dropout rate.

"We are going to do some great deeds together," he told a racially diverse crowd of about 7,000 people gathered for his inauguration in Grant Park. "Let us begin."

But Washington died unexpectedly on Nov. 25, 1987, leaving behind much unfinished business. Now, six Chicagoans and a former one mark the 25th anniversary of his death by reflecting on his policies and considering the question: Are blacks better or worse off now than a quarter-century ago?

The answer is a mixed bag.

A tough economy has nudged an already high unemployment rate among black Chicagoans even higher. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average black unemployment rate in the city last year was 24.2 percent, way above the city's current overall rate of 9.4 percent. In 1987, the black unemployment rate was 17.2 percent.

Although corridors of high-rise public housing have been demolished, Chicago remains the most racially segregated city in the country, according to a study by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. The 2010 U.S. census showed that many blacks have left the city for the South.

Chicago Public Schools' five-year high school graduation rate for this year's class will be 66.1 percent, says the Consortium on Chicago School Research. In 1991, four years after Washington took his unprecedented step toward education reform, CPS' five-year graduation rate was 48 percent.

But the numbers only tell part of the story. What Washington did by becoming the city's first black mayor, for many, is incalculable and enduring. He was anoutsized politician — smart and idealistic with a gift for oratory —whose historic election inspired a generation to pursue the seemingly impossible.

That includes one young community organizer who would come to Chicago, impressed by Harold Washington, and go on to become the president of the United States.

"It was the height of hope within the black community," said James Compton, former president of the Chicago Urban League. "We know that a lot of (Washington's) dreams were never actualized. But there was this esprit de corps in the black community and beyond that was unparalleled until the election of Barack Obama."

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Jacky Grimshawis vice president of policy at the Center for Neighborhood Technology. She was a senior policy adviser in the Washington administration and director of intergovernmental affairs.

The coalitions that came together under Harold — blacks, progressive whites and Hispanics — were part of a legacy that got passed down to Barack Obama. But the empowerment and civic engagement of the Hispanic community, it happened under Harold. Hispanics recognized they could be and should be a part of governing the city of Chicago. That was absolutely historic and makes all of us better off.

Harold's focus was on improving the quality of life of people in Chicago, no matter where they lived, and that included improving the conditions in public housing.

We did a survey back then of the Madden Park Homes, and I was shocked and appalled as we walked up and down the stairways. Some of the stairs had rotted away. And it was like: How do we expect people to live like that? Harold's focus on public housing was not demolition as it is today, but making sure the city's poorest residents had city services that had been lacking for years. Where you lived and how you lived mattered — back then and today. It gives you dignity.

My concern now, after the (Chicago Housing Authority's plan to transform public housing), is that affordable housing is still too hard to come by and too many of the city's poor are being left behind. To that end, we're all worse off.

Bennett Johnson, 83, is vice president of Chicago's Third World Pressand was one of Washington's advisers. They became friends in 1948 while they were attending Roosevelt University. After college, Washington, a Democrat, became the aldermanic secretary of the city's powerful 3rd Ward. Johnson, an independent, co-founded Protest at the Polls, a grass-roots organization dedicated to independent political activism in Chicago.